Self-Improvement
There Is No True Happiness, We All Look For Pleasure
“Pleasure” is just the momentary satisfaction of the body/ego, while “Happiness” is pursuing your personal growth.
What is Happiness?
According to thinkers like Schopenhauer, happiness is “not being unhappy”. The happy person is not the person who has experienced the most vivid pleasures of the greatest pleasures. A happy person is a person who spends his life without experiencing great physical and mental pain.
What is Pleasure?
The pleasant effect, liking; moderate and satisfying enthusiasm that is desired to be sustained.
If they offered you a 10-year period where you would not suffer any pain, be happy in every second, but in the end, you could not remember this period, would you accept the offer?
According to the famous philosopher Aristotle, the answer should be “No”.
According to Aristotle, you can reach true happiness only when you discover your own self, know yourself and reveal your own potential.
According to Aristotle, the situations that we call happiness are not happiness but instant satisfaction and pleasures.
When you experience instant satisfaction and pleasure, your feeling of well-being is short-lived, and this does not contribute to your personal development.
For example, according to Aristotle’s definition, the emotion experienced while under the influence of drugs and alcohol is not happiness, but instant pleasure.
While under the influence of these, the person avoids the negativities and pain in life.
But he also misses out on opportunities to gain insights and self-development experiences.
While under the influence of these substances, you do not have the opportunity to question who you are, what and who you love, and it becomes difficult to reach your ideal life.
Life is full of ups and downs. Unfortunately, sometimes life can seem to us as if it’s always ups, downs, short ascents, again downs.
But, according to Aristotle, these descents give us new experiences and perspectives.
Thus, with every perspective and experience we gain, we can become more interesting, more educated and more developed individuals.
According to Aristotle, the reason many people are unhappy is simple:
They confuse happiness with pleasure.
“Pleasure” is just the momentary satisfaction of the body/ego, while “happiness” is pursuing your personal growth.
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